Just Shut Up and Ride

Having been reminded this last weekend of physical frailties in general, and the tensile strength of your average pair of capris specifically, I lean against the back of the bus seat, willing myself to relax after a full day of work.  It is particularly after a good stiff Monday that I find myself with the bearing of an irritable Theodore Roosevelt, so I slump a little – just a little! – and think soft, abstract thoughts.
The bus driver, a portly man looking suspiciously like a biker-ish version of Sebastian Cabot, has the most elaborately macramé-ed earring I have ever seen.  A vivid blue, it dangles past his shoulder, swings as he turns his head to check his mirrors.  A tiny bell from the end of it rings as he calls out the stops.
“Next stop, Spring Street.”
I wonder about people, about the patches on their jackets, about the tattoos on their arms, the memories and stories behind them.  There was a man on the bus last summer, a thin, rough-looking man, pocks on his cheeks, his thinning hair pulled into a pony tail, the thighs of his jeans wearing through over the pockets.  Among the visible tattoos on his arms was the head and upper torso of a smiling child with what appeared to be dates inked in a filigreed scroll at his wrist. 
The tattoo of the smiling child was too heart-breaking to consider, and so I wrote it down, to consider it another time.
I wonder, now, if the earring has that sort of sentimental value.  Did a permanently capitalized She from his past make it for him?  Did he buy it at an art fair?  Did he find it?
We don’t know, do we?
And we won’t.  As they will not know about us.